Rocky II

Published January 26, 2019

Film info

Title Rocky II

Director Sylvester Stallone

Year 1979

Run time 1hr 59m

Genre Drama

Tagline The rematch of the Century

In the aftermath of his bout with Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) attempts to lead a peaceful life with his new bride, Adrian (Talia Shire). The fame and fortune from the match soon runs scarce and to make ends meet, Rocky agrees to a re-match with Apollo.

Live blog

Always tricky for a movie to pick up right where the last one left off.

8:53

“Do I look lucky?’

14:47

There’s a tiger right by them. This zoo doesn’t have big fences!

18:20

I think he got that wrong, you don’t have to carry the person all the way home, just through the door.

23:50

“Hey, Butkus, your neck looks great.”

27:16

Good job Apollo doesn’t have Twitter, the hate mail gets to him too much.

30:11

Can’t decide whether it’s a good or bad legacy - “takes a good beating.”

34:39

“You read nice.” “Thank you. You lie nice.” They are adorable.

45:17

Can’t tell if he actually does or doesn’t want to fight though.

48:43

Love Mickey’s accent. Poymenant.

50:35

Don’t totally understand why they think it would have been fixed, Creed ended up looking silly, why would he fix that to happen?

57:25

“How’s life in the bowl?” I love how he is with his turtles.

1:13:32

No training montage yet. Too much drama in the training.

1:27:31

There’s the montage I was looking for.

1:40:12

I’m really nervous.

1:47:22

I say this about a lot of sports, but who’d be a boxing ref?

1:57:23

So stressful.

Conclusions

As mentioned in the previous Rocky post, I was eager to know what happened next in the life of this humble but talkative Philadelphia boxer. This second film is just as good as the first, continuing the story of his rivalry with Apollo Creed but this time coming up with a different ending.

It was a bit annoying that they spent five minutes replaying the end of the last film, but then again we did only watch it yesterday. If it had been six months, that might have been quite useful. And I wasn’t sure of the motivation behind Adrian’s change of heart. I’ve not had a kid or been in a coma but I feel like if you did suddenly have the responsibility of a child in such dramatic fashion, you’d be even less likely to risk your health in a fight. She made the opposite choice though, and that works better for the story!

The final fight at the end, whilst I was anticipating it, I found it far more stressful than the last one. I don’t know if it was more brutal, or if I was more invested, or what, but it seemed to be endless punching and pain. Oof. Good ending though.